It had not yet been named Silicon Valley, but you had the defense industry, you had Hewlett-Packard. But you also had the counter-culture, the Bay Area. That entire brew came together in Steve Jobs.
You're talking about a younger generation, Generation Y, whose interpersonal communication skills are different from Generation X. The younger generation is more comfortable saying something through a digital mechanism than even face to face.
One thing we seem to be missing is that just as we no longer search for the news, the news finds us today (e.g. this article found me) we will no longer search for products and services, rather we will look to our social graph to what products and services they like and don't like.
Everybody's got the mindset that everything should be measurable.
